Essay: Remote control confusion

Dis-a-bil-i-ty (noun) – an inability to perform some or all of the tasks of daily life.

Under this definition, I am clearly disabled. Luckily, I live in a nation that assists even the most challenged to fit in with the mainstream. With this in mind, I am lobbying for a new social program to deal with my heartbreaking problem — Remotacantdoita (the inability to use a remote control).

A list numbered one through 12 sits on the table by my chair in front of our new television set. If I read it carefully and follow the steps to the letter, the TV, receiver and DVD player should work together like a well-coached team. Or so I'm told.

Buttons, buttons everywhere!
There are exactly 64 buttons on the remote control that my husband Bob programmed to be "universal", which means it'll do everything short of writing and producing the news. So why is it that we still sometimes need one of the other remote controls?

My eyes glaze over as Bob explains whether I should push V1 or AUX or PIP for the DVD player, stereo, Playstation or Wii. On a single remote, there are buttons labelled TV, TV/Video, View TV, and iTV. There are buttons to go back, go forward, skip back, skip forward, or simply change position. There's a green button labelled "R". What does it do? Is it recall, rerun, review?

"Got it?" he asks me when he is finished pointing out all the critical features.

"Uh huh," I answer numbly, and go to the kitchen for a badly needed glass of wine.

It's just me and the remotes
Bob recently left town for a couple of nights, leaving me gleefully alone with our big screen TV, our satellite and our surround-sound speakers. For once, I would have an entire weekend without football, basketball or stock car racing. And yet the house was quiet save for the increasingly heavy pounding of my index finger. I pushed so many buttons that the TV practically reprogrammed itself to become a microwave.

Slumping dejectedly, I considered calling Bob and asking for instructions but knew I would never live it down. I sniffed and picked up the phone.

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